In Search of Lost Time, Volume I_ Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [131]
“Will you really?” Mme Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a favour in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate. Perhaps, too, by dint of saying that she was going to be ill, she had worked herself into a state in which she occasionally forgot that it was all a fabrication and adopted the attitude of a genuine invalid. And it may often be remarked that invalids, weary of having to make the infrequency of their attacks depend on their own prudence, like to persuade themselves that they can do everything that they enjoy, and that does them harm, with impunity, provided that they place themselves in the hands of a higher authority who, without putting them to the least inconvenience, can and will, by uttering a word or by administering a pill, set them once again on their feet.
Odette had gone to sit on a tapestry-covered settee near the piano, saying to Mme Verdurin, “I have my own little corner, haven’t I?”
And Mme Verdurin, seeing Swann by himself on a chair, made him get up: “You’re not at all comfortable there. Go along and sit by Odette. You can make room for M. Swann there, can’t you, Odette?”
“What charming Beauvais!” said Swann politely, stopping to admire the settee before he sat down on it.
“Ah! I’m glad you appreciate my settee,” replied Mme Verdurin, “and I warn you that if you expect ever to see another like it you may as well abandon the idea at once. They’ve never made anything else like it. And these little chairs, too, are perfect marvels. You can look at them in a moment. The emblems in each of the bronze mouldings correspond to the subject of the tapestry on the chair; you know, you’ll have a great deal to enjoy if you want to look at them—I can promise you a delightful time, I assure you. Just look at the little friezes round the edges; here, look, the little vine on a red background in this one, the Bear and the Grapes. Isn’t it well drawn? What do you say? I think they knew a thing or two about drawing! Doesn’t it make your mouth water, that vine? My husband makes out that I’m not fond of fruit, because I eat less of them than he does. But not a bit of it, I’m greedier than any of you, but I have no need to fill my mouth with them when I can feed on them with my eyes. What are you all laughing at now, pray? Ask the doctor; he’ll tell you that those grapes act on me like a regular purge. Some people go to Fontainebleau for cures; I take my own little Beauvais cure here. But, M. Swann, you mustn’t run away without feeling the little bronze mouldings on the backs. Isn’t it an exquisite patina? No, no, you must feel them properly, with your whole hand!”
“If Mme Verdurin is going to start fingering her bronzes,” said the painter, “we shan’t get any music tonight.”
“Be quiet, you wretch! And yet we poor women,” she went on, turning towards Swann, “are forbidden pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in the world to compare with it. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour of being madly jealous … Come, you might at least be polite—don’t say that you’ve never been jealous!”
“But, my dear, I’ve said absolutely nothing. Look here, Doctor, I call you as a witness. Did I utter a word?”
Swann had begun, out of politeness, to finger the bronzes, and did not like to stop.
“Come along; you can caress them later. Now it’s you who are going to be caressed, caressed aurally. You’ll like that, I think. Here’s the young gentleman who will take charge of that.”
After the pianist had played, Swann was even more affable towards him than towards any of the other guests, for the following reason:
The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the delicate line of the violin-part, slender but robust, compact and commanding, he had suddenly become aware of the mass of the piano-part beginning to emerge in a sort of liquid rippling of sound,